


laughing aloud at the spinning stars

by nbsherlock



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Transphobia, It's About Found Family, M/M, Stone Top, Trans Boris Pavlikovsky, Trans Character, Trans Theodore Decker, Transphobia, submitting to the mortifying ordeal of being known, written by a trans person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 05:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21010220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbsherlock/pseuds/nbsherlock
Summary: even when my mother was alive i saw little of a future for myself. i wanted to be happy, that was all. it was only after she died that i realized how little say what we want has in the way our lives unfold.what i got instead was a series of events that led me exactly where i needed to be, a place that i eventually wanted to be.





	laughing aloud at the spinning stars

**Author's Note:**

> the tags make this sound terribly traumatizing i promise it's not that bad. skip down to the end notes if you want some content warnings! title from lucy dacus's body to flame.

I don’t take my shirt off in front of him until we’re older.

He doesn’t pester me about it. He knows we’re one and the same, that we’re cut from the same cloth, molded from the same forgotten part of Adam’s rib.

He’s far more shameless about it, stripping his shirt off in the backyard and drinking a beer in a ratty, sweat-stained sports bra. At school we both swim in hoodies and sweatpants, looking every bit like burnout stoners who haven’t gone through puberty yet. Arguably, that’s what we are.

Moving has the benefit of a fresh start at a new school. Boris has experienced this several times over. Eventually, a teacher will let a birth name slip and things change, shift almost imperceptibly— or sometimes overtly; Boris’s black eye after mouthing off to some kid whose name I can no longer remember. “You shouldn’t punch girls!” Laughter. Boris binge drinking and passing out with his face in Popper’s fur.

But for a while, it’s good. Being known as Boris and Theo and then BorisandTheo. The two kids that reek of cigarettes and sometimes weed, who laugh during English class at jokes that seem to be shared only by the two of us, like there’s a telepathic link between us that only shares jokes about Thoreau.

After the name thing, no one talks to us at all. We ditch school. We smoke cigarettes in stairwells and get high during gym class. There are times I remember getting to school and then nothing. Waking up on my couch with Boris curled around me, running his hand along Popper’s back. Smiling up at me with bleary eyes and asking if I wanted a drink, or if I could make us something to eat. The answer was always yes, to both.

He would sit on the counter, legs crossed at the ankles and drinking a beer while I made mac and cheese or steaks stolen from the store that we cooked in hunks of butter. We would eat and drink and smoke until we felt sick, and by that time my dad and Xandra would either come home (at which point we would make our way upstairs or to Boris’s if his dad wasn’t home) or we’d end up passed out somewhere in the house.

My dad still calls me by my birth name, or nicknames for it that I remember from years ago. Xandra calls me ‘the kid’. My mom tried her hardest, but called me puppy before she would call me anything else. I remember moments when she’d call my name from the other room, “Theo, can you come here?” and the silent elation I carried with me.

Boris had never known that until I introduced him to my dad. I wondered, sometimes, if that was why Boris insisted on my giving my dad a break. He had never known the acceptance of a parent. I didn’t care to correct him, to tell him that my dad didn’t think of it like that. That he only used Boris’s chosen name because he didn’t have a choice. I saw how his dad was with him. I didn’t want to hurt him. I still don’t want to hurt him.

In the desert it was easy to fade into the background. In the summer we saw no one but each other, left alone at night and letting our voices fly free. None of the careful balancing act. His laugh like bells bouncing off the walls, the ceilings high and the house empty enough for an echo to ring back down to us. We would lay on the floor for hours, something playing on the TV in the background. Sometimes we wouldn’t talk at all. Sometimes we couldn’t keep our mouths shut.

I figure last night was a case of the latter. Drinking until we were sick and drinking some more. Laughing until we cried. Watching the same DVD on repeat and missing the ending every time.

My face is pressed into the carpet and Popper is curled around my head, snoring. Boris is somewhere nearby. I can hear his snores filling the spaces in between Popper’s. A drone of sound always in the room.

My mouth tastes stale and I swallow compulsively around it, my stomach turning. Boris moans, and then he kicks me. “What?” I groan. “What’s happening?”

“Gonna be sick,” he sighs. His voice is coming from behind me.

“Bathroom.”

He makes a perturbed noise, and then I hear him start shuffling down the hall. The door shuts and I can hear him retching. I take that as my cue to fall back asleep.

—

I’m looking at Pippa when my mother dies.

This is what I hope, anyway. The bomb goes off and she dies immediately and I’m looking at Pippa when it happens. I can’t bring myself to believe otherwise, that feet away from me she was dying the way that Welty died. Slow and painful. Asking where I am.

In this dream I’m looking at Pippa and then the bomb goes off and I go straight for where I know my mother is. I see Pippa’s hair in the rubble and I keep walking. And I see the back of her head. And then—

“Potter,” his hushed voice. “Wake up.”

I startle awake. My heart is racing and I take a stuttering breath before starting to cry. A cruel voice in the back of my head says boys don’t cry. I can’t silence it but I can’t stop myself from sobbing either. Boris wraps his arms around me and pulls my head to his chest.

In the moment I imagine my mother is holding me. I feel bad about it later. I never tell him.

He strokes the back of my head. “Shh, Potter, shh.”

I choke on my tears. I want to apologize for crying all over his shirt, for wiping my nose on him absentmindedly, but I can’t breathe enough to make the words come out. “Shh, Potter. Go to sleep.”

I don’t want to go back to sleep but the warmth of him crawls under my skin and knocks me unconscious.

—

In the eye of the tornado sits nights I remember in flashes. I only make sense of them years later. Glimpses of skin slick with pool water or sweat, the taste of smoke and copper. I’m kissing someone. There’s only one person it could be but I don’t want to think about it. If I think about it that makes it real. I remember the rush, the laughter and the push and pull. I wake up after these nights unsure if I dreamt it. I don’t bring it up. I lay in my shame until he wakes up and drags me downstairs to drink straight vodka from coffee mugs. Hair of the dog that bit you. I do feel a little bit better after nights like that. I never have any nightmares.

\--

There’s a girl on my couch and she’s calling me Theo, calling him Boris. I feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

She’s smoking a joint and Boris’s head is in her lap. She twines her fingers through his hair. I feel sick to my stomach. She passes the joint to Boris, who offers to pass it to me. I want so badly to be high right now. I’m not going to touch that joint.

I drink straight from a bottle of vodka until I can’t see more than a foot in front of me. Until I can’t see him leaning back and cooing to her, calling her Kotku. She giggles at him and touches his cheek. He has a black eye right now. I wonder, viciously, if he’s told her about his dad. If she knows what I do. If she knows anything I don’t.

“Theo,” she calls. I wish I could ignore her. My head lolls towards her. “Me and Boris are leaving if you wanna lock up.”

I blink. They’re leaving? “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “It’s late.”

I didn’t want her to answer. I wanted Boris to speak for himself. He’s draped along her side. He’s incredibly high, I can tell by the stupid look on his face.

“Boris?”

“Mm?” He answers, eyes floating over to meet mine. He’s flushed, smiling.

“Never mind. I’ll lock up.”

“Night, Potter,” he says.

I lock the door behind them. I don’t normally bother. Tonight I want to barricade myself inside.

—

I don’t know who I am without him.

When I’m not with him I spend hours doing nothing. It doesn’t feel right to get high or drunk (though I do it anyway, I don’t have anything else to do). It almost feels like cheating. What he’s doing feels like cheating.

I think about him kissing Kotku. About her being his girlfriend. I don’t want to imagine myself there. I don’t want to regress to a time before I knew my own name. I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend.

I think about it anyway. Boris likes girls. I think about being a girl for Boris. My stomach turns and I have to lay on the floor for an hour. Popper curls up around my head.

I like girls, I think. But I also like Boris. I wouldn’t ever want Boris to be a girl for me. I can’t even imagine it. Boris, sturdy and unwavering. Sitting in the backyard with his shirt off but still Boris, a boy and my best friend.

My heart aches all the time, now. I wish there was a reason why.

—

Before the painting, after the painting. Somewhere in there is the day I leave.

There’s the impact of my dad’s hand on my face. (You shouldn’t hit girls, my head reminds me.) And then there’s the acid in the park and the way the world looked. Painted in broad strokes. He took my hand as we walked back to my house and I felt every line on his sweaty palm.

One time, Xandra held my hand in hers and told me my heart line was long, past the center of my hand but stopping before the other end, which meant I had a lot of love to give. Then she frowned, traced a long nail along my skin and told me that my life line was short. She said it was a shame. So much love to give, so little time. It was the first and only time she seemed to feel anything towards me. Even if it was pity.

In that moment, stumbling up my street, I felt his life line, his heart line, his head line. I imagined I knew what they meant. I imagined that they were deep and long and that that meant that he would never leave my side. I imagined the lines on our hands connecting to form one. Our lives, our hearts, our heads.

In the space between is Xandra’s sobs, my hastily packed bag.

And then the desperate look on his face. The kiss. I wouldn’t be able to find it on a map. Not on a timeline. There’s before and after and there’s the blur of Vegas. He lives in that blur. He’s the only clear thing about it. But I can’t find him, now. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.

—

But then, I see him. Later. We’ve both grown up, at least physically. His smile looks the same but he’s different. He rolls his eyes at me when I mention how handsome he is. “Me? Look at you, Potter.”

I’m taller than him now. “How long?”

He shrugs. “When I turned 17. Drug dealers can get more than coke and acid, turns out.”

“You, or?”

“Some guy I met. Friend of Kotku’s— you remember her?” He laughs, sharp. “Always hated her, eh?”

I didn’t hate her. I hated that he wanted to spend more time with her than with me. I shrug.

“Anyway, yeah. Guy was like walking pharmacy. Helped that he liked me.” He smiles with all of his teeth.

I point at my mouth. “New?”

He barks out a laugh. “Yes! Thank you for noticing. Lots of money.”

“You look good, Boris.”

“Mm,” he hums. He tilts his head. “And you? How long.”

“I was 18.”

“And,” he motions to his chest.

I nod. “You?”

He laughs. “No,” he shakes his head. “You remember, when we used to talk about it as kids. You whining about them— but Boris, it’s so terrible. Boris, don’t lay your head there I don’t like it. Boris, as soon as I can I’m cutting them off. And me, with my shirt off in the backyard. You remember?” I do. That’s the way I remember him, tugging his shirt over his head and laying on the ground. Smoking a cigarette and smiling at me. I nod. He shrugs. “I never minded mine. Would miss them if I ever decided to wear a dress, eh?”

“Why would you-“

He laughs. “Why not, eh? I’m a twenty first century man.”

He always felt differently about things than I did. I was furtive about it. I didn’t want to talk about it until he brought it up. I still don’t want to talk about it, now. I rarely do. I haven’t been with anyone since, well—

“You have any girlfriends, boyfriends?”

I slept around a little in college. “No.” And then, as I lift my glass to my lips, “You?”

He grins. “I have a wife.”

I choke. “You what?”

“I’m married! This is shocking?” He pulls out his phone and slides it across the table to me, taps once on the screen. A blonde woman with a pinched face appears.

“Bullshit.”

He grins.

I wait.

“Okay, so maybe bullshit.” He pulls the phone back. “This should not surprise you, though! I am a successful man! I should have 20 blonde wives in magazines. Anyway,” he slaps the table. “Another round?”

“No, no. How about we go somewhere. Get a taxi?”

“A taxi!”

And then I live in that blur with him. It doesn’t last long enough.

—

In Amsterdam I dream of my mother. I know I look different than I did before. I worry, in the fleeting moments of consciousness I hold, that she might not recognize me.

During bouts of sobriety, I’d dream that she wouldn’t see me because she didn’t recognize me. That she’d be looking down from a window in a building I wasn’t allowed to enter. And I’d ask them to let me in, again and again and again. And they’d say: Sorry, she doesn’t know who you are. And I’d say: I’m her son. And they’d say: Sorry, she says you don’t look like her son.

Or worse: Sorry, she says she doesn’t have a son.

The dream would drive me to the drugs again. And so on, and so on.

This time, she smiles. I can’t move and I can’t speak. She doesn’t speak either but I can see that she’s upset. I want to tell her I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. That I’m sorry I can’t be the little girl she gave birth to, that I can’t be anything to her because she’s gone and it’s my fault—

The painting. Christ, the painting. I saw it and then it was gone. Everything in my life, just like that. There and then gone. And I’m helpless. I can’t hold onto any of it.

—

I’m laying on Boris’s couch (which smells like weed and cat piss, even though Boris doesn’t have a cat) and drinking broth out of a mug. He’s sitting with my feet in his lap. He’s laughing at something on tv. The show isn’t in a language I speak, but I find myself laughing along regardless.

He wraps a hand, gentle and thin, around my foot and leaves it there. His other hand brings a cigarette to his mouth. I set the mug on the ground. He turns to me.

“Okay?”

“I’m a little hot,” I admit. There’s sweat dripping down my spine, pooling in the small of my back.

He cocks his head to the side. “Take your sweater off.”

Being with him again had made me forget. It had brought me back to Las Vegas, to a time when I couldn’t bare to look at myself, let alone have someone else look at me. I still feel strange in these situations. I remember flashes of college, of being with girls who danced around it. Who didn’t mind that I didn’t want to get off. Why would they? It wasn’t like we were going to do this again. Drinks, and then a quick fuck where I keep all of my clothes on. And then they leave and I get mind numbingly high and when I see them in the halls I almost don’t recognize them. It’s fleeting.

Since then, nothing. No one sees me. Sometimes I don’t even see me, dodging mirrors, showering in the dark. It’s hard. It used to be harder, but enough time has passed that I only remember how hard it is now. I sometimes wonder, in passing, what I would be like now if Boris had come to New York with me. If we would have gone to queer clubs and done party drugs and given each other our shots and cut each other’s hair and been happy. Overall, to have been happy. That would have been amazing.

I wonder now, with my feet in his lap, how I kept living all those years. Conversational Russian and heroin on occasion. Nothing staying— except Hobie and the shop. Popper. What I thought was the painting. Some things stayed. But the things that filled the space he left were there until they weren’t. The drugs, the drink, the people. None of it stayed.

But now, looking at him at the other end of the couch, smoking a cigarette and laughing at a Belgian sitcom. I can see years ahead of me.

I pull the sweater over my head and keep watching.

—

We start going on dates.

There’s no other word for it. We go out for dinner, to the movies, for coffee, to museums. (We find special exhibits and events to bring each other to. On more than one occasion we’ve bought tickets to the same thing for the same day.)

We don’t hold hands during. We don’t kiss after. We crawl into the same bed but we don’t touch. At least, not on purpose. I wake entangled with him regardless.

One morning we wake and he reminds me of something I managed to forget about. Some memories of Vegas are vivid. Others melt together. Our legs are still intertwined.

“Do you remember,” he starts, smiling. Uncharacteristically coy. “Those nights when we used to.” He makes a face like I should know exactly what he’s talking about.

“What?”

His eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean: what?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I suddenly know exactly what he’s talking about. I start pulling back.

“When we used to fool around.”

I try to find any specific instance of this in my memory. I remember the booze, the drugs. I remember being sick. I remember waking up feeling like death. I remember Boris almost overdosing. I remember almost overdosing.

I remember him. I remember sweat and heat and skin and blood. I shake my head.

“Jesus, Potter!” He barks out a laugh. “Real blackout drunk, eh?”

“Fuck off,” I choke out. “I remember. I just-- I don’t remember a lot of it. It’s all really-”

He shrugs, nods. “Blurry. Was nothing serious. Just grinding against each other. Making out. Kids stuff.”

Kids stuff.

“I can’t believe you never-“

“Said something? About this? You never said anything. I knew you would not be happy if I brought it up.”

I shake my head. “I just can’t believe-“

“Potter, you very much have never wanted to talk about us.”

Us. “Us?”

He gives me a look. It says: you know exactly what I’m talking about. I don’t know what he’s talking about. My heart is racing. I give him a look back.

“Our,” he waves a hand between us. “Thing. Since childhood.”

I didn’t know there was a thing. “Boris, I really don’t-“

“We are dating, yes?”

I blink. “I mean, not technically. We’ve never said anything.”

“God, you are so,” he shuts his eyes tight and rolls onto his back. “I have done all I can do, yes? Maybe you just don’t want to.”

“To what, Boris?” I feel hysterical, like my life has been moving forward and I’ve been stalling miles back.

“Be together? Be a couple?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He looks at me. “Theo.”

And, God, it’s weird to hear him call me that. “What?”

“Do you want me to ask you to be my boyfriend or something?”

I start laughing. I can’t help it. He flinches, and then grins, wide and fake. And that’s no good. I step into the blur of him and take his face in my hands. And then I’m kissing him.

It’s sloppy. I haven’t done this in so long. Kissed someone, especially like this. He’s laughing into my mouth and I’m laughing back. It’s joyous, it feels like a celebration.

And then his thigh moves up between my legs and it’s like a record scratching.

No one (except him, apparently) has ever touched me. I’ve never wanted anyone to. I’m fine with everything else. Giving head, putting my fingers between their legs, my thigh pressed up against them if we’re in a hurry. I’ve never wanted it in return. Or, well, I’ve wanted it, an ache that spreads all over my body, but I don’t let myself have it.

Once, I hooked up with the same person twice. She was funny. She had a nose ring and she was in my Intro to Russian Lit class. She asked me to go for coffee and when I suggested drinks instead she laughed and said, “isn’t it a little early for that?” It was. It was 12 o’clock on a Tuesday. I didn’t see fit to mention that I’d have gone for a drink then if she hadn’t invited me out.

So we went for coffee and talked about her. She would ask me questions about myself and I’d redirect them. I didn’t want a first date. I wanted to get drunk with someone pretty and take them home. I wanted to get her off and then go home and put a pillow between my thighs. This was too complicated. I didn’t want complicated.

She asked me back to hers after coffee anyway. I wished, desperately that I was high or drunk. She pulled me down and kissed me as soon as the door shut behind her. She tasted like vanilla and espresso. She made sweet noises into my mouth and then took my hand and brought me to her bedroom.

From there things were the same. I got her off. She asked if I wanted anything and I said no. She kissed me again, lit a cigarette and grinned and asked me if I wanted to do this again. I said yes. I still don’t know why I did that.

The next time, we went for drinks and then back to her place. I got her off twice, her hand in my hair pulling me in. Somehow she ended up on top of me, kissing me and then kissing my neck and then—

“Wait.”

She pulled back to look at me.

“I don’t want to-“

She looked hurt. I didn’t want that.

“It’s not you. I just haven’t. You’re probably expecting-“

She made a face. “Theo, I know what’s in your pants. I’m not expecting anything.”

That startled me. For some reason I’d had no idea that she knew. I suddenly wanted so badly to be anywhere else, to at least be drunker than I was. “I just don’t want to, okay?”

She got off of my lap and sat back against her headboard, pulled her knees up to her chest. She lit a cigarette and smoked it quickly. She reminded me of someone. Dark hair and pale skin, downing two vodka tonics before pulling me away from the bar to dance. It suffocated me all at once.

“I like you, Theo,” she said, softly, lighting a second cigarette. “I wish you’d let me.”

We’d only gone on two dates. I still don’t know how I could’ve handled it better, this mess I had gotten myself into. I got up and left.

Right now, I can’t get up and leave.

“Boris,” I cough out, pulling back, biting his lip on the way.

“What?” His face is flushed, his eyes wide.

“I don’t want to-“

He pulls back. He looks concerned. “No?” He looks me over. I can feel that my face is flushed. It’s mortifying.

“No. I don’t ever... do that.”

He looks surprised, now, eyebrows up. “No one since me?”

I look away from him. “I mean, I got other people off but never...”

He shakes his head, leans over me to grab a pack of cigarettes from his bedside table. He lights one, offers one to me. I take it and sit up. He lights it for me.

“Potter, that is ridiculous.”

I bristle. “Fuck you, Boris.”

He laughs. “No, no. I understand not wanting a stranger to touch you. But why not go on a few dates, eh? Get to know someone?”

I search for any reason beyond: they weren’t you. I come up empty handed.

“I couldn’t.”

His face softens. “Mm, well. I couldn’t either. Slept around enough though.” He gives me a look again, pinched in the middle. “So you’re saying your last orgasm was when you were fifteen-“

“No! No, I’m not saying that.”

He nods solemnly. “In a committed relationship with your hand. I understand this.”

I snort. I can’t help it. The laughter bubbles up and over.

He keeps a tally on his hand, “Your hand, a pillow, oh— do you own a vibrator, Potter?” He’s got that cherubic look on his face. He knows he’s being a little shit.

I do own a vibrator. I’m not going to tell him that, though. I shake my head. He cackles. “You are lying. You are a terrible liar, you know this?”

“You’re so obnoxious.”

He grins. “Will you let me kiss you again?”

I pull him into my lap, twist my fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck and drag his mouth to mine.

—

Things change so slightly that they barely feel different. We hold hands in public. We kiss after dates. We crawl into bed together and wrap around each other before falling asleep. Hobie notices. He smiles at me, clasps a hand on my shoulder one day and says, “I’m happy for you, Theo.” I can’t find appropriate words so I smile, nod, go back to attending to a chest of drawers.

I get a text from Pippa in all capitals. It reads: HOBIE TOLD ME ABT U AND BORIS. I’M HURT! CALL WHEN U CAN OR I WILL FLY THERE.

I almost hold back from calling so I can see her in person. I know she’ll follow through on the threat.

The phone barely rings once before she answers.

“Theodore Decker,” she says. I can hear the smile in her voice. I can always hear the smile in her voice.

“Hi Pippa.”

Boris is at the other end of the couch. He looks up from a book he has settled in his lap and grins. I roll my eyes. They have a strange relationship, in love with the other despite never speaking. Charmed through secondhand stories.

“I can’t believe I had to hear from _Hobie_ that the two of you are finally together.” I can practically hear her shaking her head through the phone. “Of course, it makes sense, he’s a terrible gossip. But so are _you_ so I would have thought you would _call me_ when it happened.”

“I know, I’m sorry-”

She sighs, loud and dramatic. “Was it at least very romantic? Were you standing in the rain and crying in each other’s arms? Was it in a museum? Oh, Theo, tell me it was in a museum.”

I’m laughing before she finishes. “Not quite. He basically had to tell me we were already together.”

There’s a moment of silence. “Of course. Please send Boris my well wishes, having to be in a relationship with someone with no brain must be very hard-”

“_Pippa_, I swear there was no way for me to have known.”

Boris is glaring daggers into the side of my head. He holds his hand out, asking for my phone.

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Good, maybe I’ll get some straight answers.”

Boris takes the phone, smiling as he holds it to his ear. “Hello Pippa!”

I hear the muffled sounds of an elated Pippa, I watch Boris’s eyes light up.

“Oh yes, it was ridiculous.” He puts his book down. “We are going on dates all the time, yes? I am assuming that we’re together because of this.” A pause. “Yes, common sense, exactly. So we’re in bed one morning,” pause for an exclamation, “oh, yes! We were already sleeping in the same bed.” Extended pause for laughter. Boris grins. “So I bring up when we used to fool around in Vegas. Yes! We did! Many times. I thought he knew, was ignoring it or something. But then the dates, I figured I should bring it up to make sure. And he doesn’t remember!” Boris bites his lip as Pippa speaks. “Mm, well. Probably. Was a hard time for both of us.”

I pick up his book and flip through it. There are lines underlined and circled, notes scribbled in the margins.

“Oh yes, so we are in bed and I bring this up and he is all ‘Boris I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about’ and I am all, ‘do you want me to ask you to be my boyfriend or something’. And then we kiss. And now— Yes, very happy.” He wrinkles his nose. “No. He’s got issues with that. It is fine.”

From there I feel necessary to cut their conversation off. Boris fights me for a second before snatching his book back and handing me my phone. I say a few quick goodbyes to her, make her promise to visit, and then tackle Boris to the couch and kiss him until he can’t breathe.

—

Just before the holidays Mrs. Barbour invites me to dinner. I feel strange in her house. I’ve only ever walked these halls toted around as Andy’s friend-who-is-a-girl (Kitsey skipping through the halls singing,“Andy’s got a girlfriend, Andy’s got a girlfriend.”). Andy was good about it. Called me Theo, never said anything untoward. Without him there’s just a room full of people who saw me as a little girl and are faced with a grown man years later.

Mrs. Barbour and I have kept in touch through email since we got dinner together a few years ago. We don’t live far from each other, but it felt strange to visit too often. There was nothing attaching me to the Barbours anymore. Just a kindness they did me when I was a kid.

I haven’t seen Kitsey or Toddy or Platt yet. I imagine them the same age as they were when I left, though I know that can’t be the case. I wonder if Mrs. Barbour warned them. Theo is coming over. (Who?) Theo, Andy’s old friend who lived with us. (I thought her name was—)

I hope she said something. I fiddle with the hem of my sweater until Boris slaps my hand and takes it in his. Boris is also here, which is a saving grace if only for his ability to lie which I lack. He could figure out a way to get us out of here.

The elevator slides open and I rap my knuckles against their front door. A girl stands on the other side, pretty and pink and smiling. “Theo!” she says, throwing her arms open.

It takes me a moment to recognize this as Kitsey. She’s never called me that name.

“Kitsey, you-“ I hug her. “Oh my god, you’re a whole adult.”

She giggles, pulling back and smoothing out her skirt. “And look at you.You grew up, huh?” Her eyes go to Boris.

“Oh, this is Boris, my-“

Boris steps in where I find myself at a loss for words. “Boyfriend.”

“Ah!” Kitsey cheers, claps her hands. “Brilliant. Come in, mommy will be so glad to see you.”

Boris waits for her to turn before mouthing ‘mommy?’, cocking an eyebrow. I shake my head. We follow her into the other room.

And then there she is. She looks the same as I remember her. Maybe a bit older. She smiles at me and stands to pull me into her arms.

“Mrs. Barbour, it’s been too long,” I say, hugging her. She pulls back, still smiling.

“I’ll say. You look so handsome, Theo. And you-“ she turns to Boris. “I love your coat. You must be Boris.”

Boris lights up. “Yes, ma’am.”

Mrs. Barbour clicks her tongue. “None of that. Call me Samantha.”

From there the night carries on and on and on. It’s a long night, but we all drink enough wine to smooth the way. We toast to Andy, to Mr. Barbour. Mrs. Barbour sheds a few tears. Boris wraps an arm around me. We eat too much food and then too much dessert and before long me and Boris are stumbling out of their apartment, stuffed with food and flushed from drink. He keeps grinning at me, soft and bleary eyed.

I think that if he was anyone else I’d take him home and put myself between his legs, make a home there for a while. But I don’t want to sleep with him while we’re drunk. It doesn’t feel right. He isn’t helping by hanging off of me, pulling me over to street lamps and kissing me against them. He’s an affectionate drunk. He wants to be touched. He wants to touch. I wish I could bring myself to do that for him.

As we stumble home I think about it. A different night, different circumstances. I lay him down on our bed and kiss him, kiss down his body and get him off. Again and again and again until he’s begging. And then.

And then I guess we’d go to sleep.

But the fantasy feels wrong, incomplete. So instead, my fantasy self gets him off again and again and again and then, laying next to him, watching his chest rise and fall, his flushed face, I get myself off. He rolls over and kisses my neck while I do it. Right now, he turns and grins at me, all teeth, as we walk down the street to the subway. I think that could work.

—

The holidays are better now than they ever had been, the two of us together. We put up a tree in our apartment. We drink mulled wine on the couch and watch entire tv series-- there’s so many that we missed over the years. Our lives were endless continuums of highs and unbearable lows. There’s never been time for the mundanity of everyday life. I was high until I wasn’t, and then I wasn’t functional until I was high again. I remember sitting on the floor with my back against Welty’s (and then my) bed watching the room spin around me and feeling the crushing weight of sobriety press onto my shoulders.

I remember the summer I was 19, thinking: okay, this is it. I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going to stop. I remember the bone aching detox, the hours I spent on the toilet with my head in a trash can. I remember my teeth chattering even when I was drenched in sweat. I remember my skin crawling. I remember giving up and nearly overdosing for my troubles.

The holiday after that was morose. I felt sick to my stomach, sitting across the table from Hobie knowing I had just finished shooting up in my bedroom. He had friends around. They drank and laughed and I faded into the background, content to watch and listen until I had to slink back to my bedroom to snort something.

I know Hobie noticed. I don’t know if he felt unqualified to intervene, or if he did try and I just can’t remember. My memory is so spotty. I find flashes of things I can’t remember experiencing in my head. I have no way of knowing if they happened or not.

Now, after a careful detox on both of our parts that lasted nearly a year due to two separate relapses, things move slow. We still drink. Boris shrugs, knocks his glass into mine and toasts to the inevitability of death. The drink may kill us, but it won’t do it as fast as the drugs were. He looks healthier.

Right now we’re watching an old sitcom. Boris is getting distracted. To be fair, I am too. He glances over at me. I smile. He smiles back.

I remind myself that things just happen. Death is inevitable, but so is life. I don’t have to plan for something good to happen. It is still so hard to think of it that way. I expect my life to be one ongoing downward spiral that occasionally finds odd peaks.

Boris is sitting on the other end of the couch. It feels just like when we were kids. I could be there now, if not for the complete change of scenery.

Vegas was bright white light and high ceilings. Sparse furniture and the smell of garbage and wet dog. It was wide open abandoned space and grief. Terrible, all-encompassing grief waylaid only by getting black out drunk and lying in the bottom of Boris’s pool.

Our apartment here is stuffed with furniture, with things we don’t need. I find Boris tacking something new to the wall almost daily. Vegas never felt like home. This, our space, is home. The fridge is filled with take out containers and we have packs and packs of cigarettes in the drawer by the front door (‘in case we run out’). The couch is covered in pillows and blankets and usually the two of us.

I never thought I’d have something like this. I didn’t want something like this. I was content with my room at Hobie’s and wandering through life half-aware of my surroundings. I didn’t want to date. I didn’t want to fall in love. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to live passively.

But then, Boris. And life started making sense. This all seemed attainable. Maybe only in some far off future, sure. But attainable nonetheless.

Boris grins at me. “Bed?”

It’s 1:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. I don’t see why not.

He pulls me up off the couch and drags me to our bedroom. He collapses back onto the bed and tugs his shirt over his head. Then he tugs me down on top of him.

“I,” I start. This is hard, even if I don’t want it to be. “Where can I touch you?”

Boris smiles, pulls me down by my neck and kisses me. He tastes like red wine, like the leftover cold pizza we ate an hour ago. We kiss for a while before he takes my hand and places it on his chest.

I pull back and stare at it. He’s wearing a sports bra, in much better condition than the ones I remember him wearing in Vegas. He raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“You’re asking me?”

He shrugs. “I’m perfect. You are shaking, a bit.”

I am. I take my hand back. “I just. It’s hard for me to separate what I want from what you-“

“I want whatever you will give me.”

“But that’s not how it works. You should tell me what you want.”

He hums, nods. “I want you to touch me,” he takes my hand and puts it back on his chest, “here. And then,” he drags it down to the hem of his shorts. “Here. And _then_,” he touches my face, his eyes earnest and bright, his smile wide and his face flushed, “I would like it very much if you would go down on me, Potter.”

I snort. “Yeah?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“Okay.”

From there it’s the same as it’s always been. Except it’s him. I get to see his face. How his eyes flutter shut and his mouth opens. I get to hear him curse and say my name and lose the ability to speak. I get to feel his body move under mine. It’s the same as it’s always been, but, God, so much better.

After, he kisses me, tongue moving up against the roof of my mouth, along my teeth. He’s sweet, kissing along my neck and my jawline.

And then he pulls back. “Now you?”

I want to run. To lock myself in another room and never come out. I swallow. “Can I just,” I don’t know what to do with myself. I wonder what my face looks like. “Touch myself?”

He smiles. “I can stay here, though?”

I nod. This is different. This is nothing I’ve ever done before. This is different than coming home from a hook up and not thinking about the person I’d just been with.

He presses his face below my jaw and kisses the skin there. It doesn’t take long until my head is tilting back and my mouth is falling open. From there I’m curling into him, kissing every inch of his face. He’s giggling, like we’re 15 and alone at my house and he doesn’t care what he sounds like. No one’s listening. It’s just us. It’s always been just us.

—

Pippa and Hobie come around the day before Christmas. We exchange gifts and stories from the time that’s passed since we last saw each other. I still work with Hobie, so the stories he tells are ones I’ve heard before. They grow slightly different over time. He exaggerates certain things. I nod along regardless. Pippa beams, grinning from ear to ear. She sparkles in the glow of the Christmas lights that Boris and I hung last week.

She sips her wine as she tells us about the dates she’s been going on.

“They’re all terrible,” she shakes her head, groaning and falling limp against the couch. “The men worse than the women. But even the women, God, I have never had so many surface level conversations.”

Boris hums. “No point in getting to know someone if you can’t tell them how your mother died the day you meet.”

Pippa nods, swallows her mouthful of wine, points at Boris. “Exactly.”

Hobie is asleep on the couch next to Pippa, head tilted back and glasses slid down the bridge of his nose.

Pippa rolls her eyes. “He always gets so bothered that we keep talking without him. Like he cares about my dating life.”

We keep on like that for an hour or two before waking Hobie and having dinner.

Everything is normal. It doesn’t make a difference that I’m not related to any of the people at the table with me. In fact, that might make it better. None of the passive aggressive silences shared between my mother and father, no storming out. I miss my mom, of course. I even miss my dad sometimes, though those moments grow increasingly rarer as I age, as I grow accustomed to having a family.

I want little more than this, my chosen family around a table drinking wine and talking about whatever comes to mind.

All of these people knew me before I grew into my skin, but they see me the way I want to be seen. I suppose it goes both ways; Boris’s high giggle filling the room as Hobie recounts a story from his college days, Pippa choking on her wine when something catches her off guard. All of us unconditionally accepting of each other.

The night winds down and Hobie and Pippa go home. She stays in her old bedroom during the holidays. Hobie says he’s offered her Welty’s room and the bigger bed several times but finds her curled up on her childhood mattress every time.

Boris and I retire early, bundled tight under the blankets on our bed. He touches my face, his cheeks pink from the alcohol. He strokes a thumb over my eyebrow. I kiss him, once and then again and again and again until I’m on top of him and his legs are around my waist.

I pull back to look at him, his kiss bitten lips curling up into a smile.

“I love you,” I say. It feels like I’ve said it a million times. I’m only slightly sure this is the first time. The words feel so familiar.

They feel just as familiar when he says them back.

—

Even when my mother was alive I saw little of a future for myself. I wanted to be happy, that was all. It was only after she died that I realized how little say what we want has in the way our lives unfold. I never said it out loud, never acknowledged it, but I wanted my mother to live. I thought it was unspoken. That she wouldn’t be taken from me early, that I’d get to live with her by my side until I was old enough to want something different.

But it didn’t matter that that’s what I wanted. What I got instead was a series of events that led me exactly where I needed to be, a place that I eventually wanted to be.

I regularly wonder what my mother would think of my life now. Of me, of Boris, of Hobie, of Pippa. I hope that she would love them, but in truth I never knew my mother the way that I know the people I love now. I loved her unconditionally. I knew that she loved galleries, I knew that she loved me. I knew that she was beautiful. But now, thinking back, I wonder what she was actually like. I wonder what she was like in college, what she was like when she and my dad first met. I wonder why she loved him. I wonder what made her stop loving him. I wonder why she stayed with him for so long.

I miss her, I do. I always will. But I don’t regret it. I don’t regret the cigarettes in the bathroom with Tom Cable, or going into the museum because of the rain, or taking the painting with me, or going to Hobart and Blackwell to give back the ring, or meeting Boris, or selling the fakes, or any of my overdoses, or even _killing someone_ in fucking Amsterdam. I live through the shame of it all because I have something to live for. I have hope for the future and it repairs antiques, it writes me novel-length emails and calls me in the middle of the night, it sleeps in my bed and kisses me awake in the morning.

I have hope salvaged from the ash of a tragedy, from all the sand in the desert. I found myself there, I found my life there. From the grief came something I thought I’d never have, something freed from chains and sent off on inexperienced wings.

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings:  
\- transphobia: there are frequent mentions of characters being misgendered both by peers and by family members, one instance of a character being hit.  
\- internalized transphobia: theo's internal dialogue deals strongly with his dysphoria. he remarks on boris's experience of gender frequently. i would call my boris nonbinary but neither of them have the vocabulary for this so theo is hung up on, in his eyes, how little boris has to do in order to feel comfortable. i'd like to think that the boris in this story would eventually come to terms with this, but as this story is from theo's point of view there is little self reflection on boris's part. i'd be willing to write something from his perspective eventually if anyone is interested in that! theo's experience of being trans is based largely on the ultimate goal of transitioning (going on t, getting top surgery, etc.) of course not everyones experience reflects this, including my own! i'd also like to mention that theo's relationship with sex is very complicated and i've tentatively tagged this fic as stone top as that's the best way i can describe it. that being said i feel that the theo in this verse could potentially become comfortable enough in his relationship with boris to invite sexual touch. at this point the label would no longer apply.  
\- drug use: canon compliant drug use. nothing too explicit. some passing mention of overdose, detox, relapse. some mention of sex while under the influence.  
\- also: canon compliant death of parents. 
> 
> please leave comments and kudos if you can! (and let me know if you'd like to hear anything else about this version of these characters.) my tumblr url is margaritaville if you want to chat!


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